“The ghosts of my life,” sang Japan frontman David Sylvian sometime back in the 80s, “blow wilder than before.”
Witnessing a live performance by The Fall can be quite a supernatural experience. On a superficial level, singer Mark E Smith resembles a spectral ghoul these days, like a post-cryogenic corpse not so much re-animated as having hauled himself singlehandedly out of the grave.
The body and the face have been ravaged by time, certainly, but there’s doubt that the mind returns each time sharper than ever before. Not long into their set in front of 300 fans tonight that he snarls, over a stomping new song, the killer line: “BBC Media City scum/The people of Salford fucking hate you.” The Fall might be approaching their 40th year in the fetid swamp of the music business, but what they came here to tell you is all about right now. It simply couldn’t be further from the comfy heritage rock show experience.
The ghosts of the past that really materialise in The Fall’s set are those of many, many generations of music that, consciously or not, bears their mark. You can imagine Smith’s disapproving scowl at the comparison, but at one point during this hit-free, devotee-friendly set they hit a Krautrock groove with an uncanny resemblance to Blur‘s ‘Parklife’. During the equally sturdy sounding ‘Blindness’, you could swear they were covering Roots Manuva‘s ‘Witness The Fitness’. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg – the list of banda who’ve appropriated something from their gloriously chaotic racket and gone on to become more famous than the would fill this page.
Bolstered by the addition of an extra drummer, giving their already momentum-heavy rhythm section a bovver booted swagger that’s half Can, half Glitter Band, they switch from punky 50s simplicity – their rendition of 12 bar standard ‘White Lightning’ early on is greeted with justified hysteria – to restless, relentless linear spacerock grooving, as Smith’s wife Elena Poulou adds piercing Moog sonics.
Naturally enough, the pressure builds and builds until the whole thing tips over into chaos. One of the microphone stand somehow finds itself in the front row with the audience joining in enthusiastically. The club’s bouncers take to the stage and then disappear into front row to, er, remonstrate with the more lively dancers. Someone invades the stage, and Smith heads for the dressing room, continuing to harangue and hector with foghorn intensity through his microphone.
It’s just as you’d expect, really, as if simply ending a song and taking a bow would be way too normal. These ghosts are blowing wilder than ever before and giving us the fright of our lives. And don’t we just love every last minute of it.
